


Remember the Feeling of Love

by Uniasus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: There are times, and they're only when he looks at Aziraphale, that Crowley remembers he used to be an angel. And angels, unlike demons, can experience love.





	Remember the Feeling of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, Good Omens, the only thing that will get me to willingly pick up a Bible. For reference. Not that I have one (though I looked).

Over 6000 years of being a demon has made Crowley good at forgetting that once, he was something else. After all, he hadn’t asked to be a demon. Hadn’t expected it, or wondered about, or didn’t even know such a thing was possible. But he became one none the less and wasn’t allowed to be anything else. Everyone reminded him of that.

Being a demon was his physical state – the black wings, the aversion to blessed items, his snake eyes.

Demonhood was also his mindset, or rather the mindset he was supposed to have – enjoy temptation, do evil deeds, thwart angels, damn souls.

He leaned into it. Might as well embrace that which you cannot change. But once in a while – and he blamed Aziraphale entirely – he remembered he’d once been an angel.

Once, he had taken joy in creation instead of destruction. Once, he wanted nothing more than to reflect God’s glory. Once, he had been so full of love – for God, for his fellow angels, for the world God created.

He doesn’t love things now – it’s impossible because demons can’t love – but he can enjoy them to excess. That’s sinful, after all, to covert items like cars, or drink all you can for the taste. To have pride in your misdeeds, to sloth away a decade. If he takes something good and happy and twists it – makes the joy of gardening a chance to show his wrath – then as a demon he can keep it.

That’s how he keeps Aziraphale. The Arrangement is cunning and slothful, tricking Heaven and lessoning Crowley’s own workload. Something a demon may participate in. He’s not allowed drinks with a friend, but he _is_ allowed a business meeting. An exchange of ideas. A chance to tempt an angel to sin – not that Crowley would ever do that to Aziraphale.

The longer the Arrangement lasts, the more Crowley explains and vilifies things in his head, the more he finds himself less willing to do so. The more he sees Aziraphale – memorizing his face, his mannerisms, his scent – the more Crowley remembers that he is not just a demon, but a Fallen angel. Aziraphale makes him think angel thoughts – protection, compassion – that Crowley can only think shadows of and can’t actually feel. It’s not the demon way.

As everyone in Hell says, demons don’t love.

As everyone in Heaven says, demons are incapable of love and they themselves are so unlovable God cannot feel it for them.

Thus, there is no way Crowley can love Aziraphale. And Aziraphale cannot love him.

(But he’d been an angel once, and if he was still? It’s a dream too fragile even for his subconscious mind to imagine.)

* * *

There are things they do for each other, it’s true. Crowley does the big stuff – getting plays right, saving books, diverting bombs – because its demonic to play with an angel’s feelings. To get an angel in your debt, to keep a good, evil partnership going. Aziraphale does the small stuff, things so small Crowley’s not sure the angel knows what he’s doing.

No other angel would have a pleasant conversation with him, no other angel would ask Crowley about his year. It’s his smiles and his words and his invitations that Crowley gets out of their relationship. It’s being seen – as something beyond a demon – being acknowledged – with hobbies and preferences – and being listened to – because God never liked questions, but Aziraphale enjoys them if it means using a book to find the answer.

In that way, with Aziraphale as the only person on Earth who understands Crowley – the only person who wanted to understand him – Crowley’s efforts to save the angel are purely selfish. Aziraphale may see it for what he likes, that there’s still good in him, but Crowley knows better.

He does it so he has one relationship where he’s not trying to one-up someone else or watching his back. One relationship where he feels like he’s an equal. Can spend time with one person who doesn’t remind him of the Fall – of the lingering pain and what the transformation to a demon means – and instead reminds him of peace and tranquility and all he ever wanted.

A world full of beautiful things, that he understood and could live freely in.

God had never given him that. Aziraphale almost does.

* * *

Almost, because there are things about his time with Aziraphale Crowley doesn’t understand. And that’s the sin that drove Crowley into the fiery inferno. Curiosity. Questions. He hadn’t meant for them to be considered doubtful, he’d just wanted answers and knowledge.

But if God has one sin, it’s pride. No one could be more knowledgeable than Her. She needed that more than love, She needed faith. Faith in Her, in the plan, in Her creations, in Her choices and decisions.

Crowley wouldn’t give it blindly, and asking for clarification burned his wings and blackened his heart.

 _Demon, demon, demon._ God, the Fallen, the Host. They all said the same thing.

He doesn’t want to go through the same with Aziraphale. If he asks questions of the angel, and Aziraphale doesn’t like it, could he fall again? Deeper? Not a demon, but truly a snake? A creature with no legs to stand on, just slither, health determined by the environment around him? Could he be dismissed and cast out twice, by both God and Her soldier?

Crowley doesn’t know. Wouldn’t risk it. So he never asks his questions.

Why does he seek out Aziraphale when they have no Arrangement business?

Why does Aziraphale smile at Crowley like he does?

Why does Crowley feel the need to gift Aziraphale with books and tea and chocolate?

Why does Aziraphale never come over?

Why does Crowley always come when Aziraphale rings? Why does Aziraphale do the same?

Why does Aziraphale make Crowley remember, once upon a time, he’d been an angel? Is it a trick?

Why does Aziraphale rarely touch him, when that is all Crowley wants?

(Why why why did he struggle to remember the feeling of love?)

* * *

Sometimes, Crowley tries to recall what love had been like. He’d only ever received it from God. A warmth on his skin from Her gaze. The swell in his heart that came from knowing he was cared for.

Sunbathing didn’t give him quite the same feeling. He often burned – a punishment from God’s light – and the warmth was temporary and localized. As for the swelling in his heart? Well. Sometimes, on a bad day, he’d convinced himself that was the reaction to Aziraphale’s smile. Aziraphale cared, Crowley could see that, and it made his heart puff up to remind Crowley it existed. It wasn’t love though, Crowley knew that. He would never be loved again.

And he had no idea how it felt to give it.

Because the one time Crowley had loved someone, he’d loved Her and She had done so much worse than say She didn’t love him back.

When he thought of loving someone, the only thing Crowley could remember was the pain of the Fall – which wasn’t really love was it, it was betrayal, it was confusion, _why why why_ – and he didn’t think that was right.

Crowley’s mind always drifted to how to use love. Demons couldn’t have it, but they could see it. Use it. Love made someone easy to manipulate. It carved deep, deep wounds – deep enough to saw off wings and boil the skin – that never healed.

Love could heal. Love could hurt.

Love could also – as he learned standing in a burning bookshop – make you very, very afraid and very, very sad.

* * *

The Last Day is a day of events. It’s not about emotions, because Crowley doesn’t want to pick through all of them. He felt so many, they shifted so rapidly, and he cannot put a label to them all.

There’s one though, that he experienced more than once. It’s a mess of an emotion – worry and _no_ and _be safe_ and sadness and fear and a painful, painful squeeze in his chest – that came across him when he found the bookshop building, when the horsemen strode out, when the demons took away someone they thought was him, and while Crowley waited and waited and waited for Aziraphale to come back from Hell.

Crowley thinks he has a word for it – an impossible word for it – but he can’t use it. He _can’t._ He’s a demon and _he can’t._

It hurts all the more. Because he wants it. He wants it in his heart and he wants it in Aziraphale’s.

He will never, ever get it.

* * *

Crowley flares out his wings in the mirror. They’re black, he wasn’t expecting anything else. He takes off his sunglasses. His eyes are flat fire, thin horizontal pupils reminiscent of his time as the Serpent of Eden. He runs a bare finger through his red bucket, and the tiny residue of holy water still in it burns his finger.

Still a demon. Still…imagining and hoping things he had no right to.

“Where shall we go to supper tonight, love?” Aziraphale had asked. Not “darling”, like usual. And Crowley knew “love” was a pet name, platonic and familiar and something others in London said to strangers. _You alright, love? Pass the spoon, love._

It doesn’t mean anything – it can’t mean anything – but it is the first time Aziraphale has used it. He switched pet names for a reason and Crowley doesn’t know why. Wants to know why. Can’t risk knowing why.

Love is not for his kind. It’s not for him. Except for maybe this. To be used against demons – against him – as demons use it against humans. Crowley had lead Eve to the Tree of Knowledge, a fruit forbidden for humans. God had put Crowley’s own forbidden fruit too far out of reach and yet also in his cold hand.

Unrequited love. An apple so shiny and red and looking oh-so-delectable filled with the worms of Crowley’s pain.

He could admit it, now. Somehow, impossibly, he’d fallen in love with an angel. A beautiful angel who was a bit of a bastard, who loved custard and books and humanity. Who Crowley could spend every single day with.

An angel who would never feel the same way.

“Is it because I wouldn’t love you the way you wanted?” Crowley asks God.

He gets no answer. He never does. Because God is a mysterious woman who kept the Ineffable Plan to Herself, who saw the Apocalypse coming and it’s thwarting, who threw half Her Host to the fire to teach the world a lesson.

Crowley has known for a long, long time he’d never understand God. He called Her stubborn and unreasonable before. Now he calls Her cruel.

It makes sense. She is the Mother of all demons, including Lucifer. They had to have gotten it from somewhere.

* * *

“Can you stop?!” Crowley snaps.

Startled, Aziraphale throws the whole bun at a very lucky duck. “Stop feeding the ducks?”

“Stop – yes, stop that.”

It’s not what Crowley wants Aziraphale to stop doing. Not even close. It’s been a month now since Aziraphale has switched nicknames, a month of being called “love”. Each time Crowley hears it, his heart gallops forward. Each time he realizes it’s not said with the emotion he wants – needs – his heart is dipped in communion wine to sting and drip red. He can’t take it anymore. But he can’t tell Aziraphale. Because the angel would pout and then apologize and feel guilty, and that would make Crowley feel bad and he would hate that but hearing the word all the time _hurts._

He wonders if he can miracle – curse – it into Aziraphale’s head. _Don’t call me “love”._

Aziraphale is looking at him, all chubby cheeks and wide eyes with an earnest desire to help. Crowley sighs. “Forget it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, love.”

Crowley doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t!, but he curls in just a tiny bit. Aziraphale notices.

“Do you, do you not like my new nickname for you?”

Crowley does and doesn’t. He loves the word. He’s tortured it’s not real.

“It’s not a name for a demon.”

“Why not?”

Crowley grits he teeth. He doesn’t want to have this conversation at two am in Aziraphale’s bookshop after three bottles of wine. He wants to have it less at one thirty in the afternoon on a sunny day in St. James’s Park.

Crowley pushes himself to his feet and marches off. Aziraphale scrambles after him. “Crowley! Crowley!”

He catches up at the Bentley, Crowley had to take the time to unlock the doors and get in after all. When he starts the engine, Aziraphale hurries around the car to open the passenger door and climb in. “Now,” he says, turning to Crowley with a huff, “Who says ‘love’ is not a name for a demon?”

Scowling, Crowley points a finger up.

Aziraphale frowns at the ceiling of the car for a second before his face lights up in understanding. It quickly morphs into what Crowley could only identify as pity.

“Out, angel.”

“No. Oh, Crowley, you must know I call you ‘love’ sincerely. You’re my best friend.” Aziraphale places his hand over Crowley’s on the stick shift.

“ _Out, angel._ ” It’s a hiss more than anything else. Aziraphale jumps in his seat but doesn’t let go of Crowley’s hand.

“No. Crowley, just because She made you Fall doesn’t mean-”

He doesn’t do it often; it requires concentration to change his metaphysical form especially as he has to keep his physical body in mind while he makes alterations. Still, Crowley turns himself into a bat and flies out the open window to escape the look on Aziraphale’s face. He can’t stand it.

He’ll come back for the Bentley later.

* * *

Aziraphale goes looking for him. He knocks on the flat’s door – Crowley ignores him – goes to Crowley’s favorite coffee shop and bar – Crowley slips out the back of both of them – and all of the demon’s other haunts. That’s the problem of meeting up every so often over 6000 years. You eventually get to know one another, and Aziraphale knows him too much.

So, Crowley goes to Tadfield.

He knows where it is. Adam, while no longer the antichrist, had kept part of his powers. A tad selfish, but he was just a kid and Crowley could admire holding onto what you wanted. Adam might not have the ability to make dreams come true, but his aura was still odd and it throws magical sensors off. It means Aziraphale wouldn’t be able to pinpoint his location.

“Are you sure you’re not hiding?” Newt asked.

“Positive.”

“You haven’t left the cottage in three days.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Surely you have other things to do.”

Crowley takes his sunglasses off to glare at Newt. He didn’t have to remove the lenses, but he likes the way his eyes make Newt gulp. He is a furious demon - not someone to pity - and thus not hiding.

“What my boyfriend is too polite to say,” Anathema says coming in from the kitchen, “is that we would really like some _alone time_.”

“Don’t wanna do a threesome? Or I could just watch, you know.”

Anathema shakes her head. Newt, to Crowley’s surprise, seems to consider the idea.

“You are leaving this cottage in an hour or I’m calling Aziraphale.”

Crowley gives her fake puppy eyes. She doesn’t budge.

“Fine.” He pushes himself up from the couch – hips first and with a wink at Newt who blushes the color of chili peppers – and heads toward the door. “I’ll be back in – “

Standing in the front yard of Jasmine Cottage is Aziraphale.

“I called him earlier today,” Anathema confesses. With that, she shuts the door behind her, the wood hitting Crowley in the back and scooting him off the step.

Aziraphale reaches forward to catch Crowley as he stumbles, but Crowley purposefully stumbles in the other direction and gains his footing without Aziraphale’s help.

“Aziraphale.”

“Crowley.”

They stand there long enough to hear the sound of a very loud thump and then a very loud moan. Newt or Anathema, Crowley couldn’t tell. Regardless, it flusters Aziraphale.

“Care for a walk?” he asks, rocking back on his heels.

“Sure,” Crowley imagines the sound of a trap in his head.

As they walk, Crowley composes words for Aziraphale to say; he’s been doing it for days. How Aziraphale would wax poetic about the love between friends or war-brothers. How Crowley is a good, worthy person deserving of affection. Platitudes all. None what he really wants.

Not that he is sure what he wants, other than something _real._

Mania. Ludus. Pragma. Storge. Philautia. Philia. Eros. Agape.

Is he allowed anyone of them? Could Aziraphale give him philia, at least? Even if what Crowley wanted was enduring strength of pragma? Would that be enough, or would the gap difference between friend and partner eventually drive him into mania?

What did the Greeks even know? They ignored God and made up their own heathen parthenon.

“Crowley.”

Crowley snaps his attention to Aziraphale. The angel is fiddling with his fingertips, opening and closing his mouth as he figures out what to say. Crowley sighs, rubbing a hand on his forehead.

“Just forget it, angel. Call me whatever you want.”

“That’s not what I want to talk about.”

Crowley lifts an eyebrow.

“During the, well, Apocalypse I suppose for lack of a better word, I realized something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. God doesn’t, well, I don’t think She actually talks to anyone.”

Crowley resists the urge to snort.

“And I’ve begun, I’ve begun to question some of Her methods.”

“Careful, angel.”

Aziraphale looks up at him. They’d never talked about why Crowley Fell, but the demon suspects that Aziraphale guessed anyway. He does like to make the angel think, after all, starting with Noah and the flood.

“It’s just,” Aziraphale huffs. Steps closer. “God may not love you, or any of those who Fell, Crowley, but I’m not Her. And I’m not blindly following the Great Plan or the Ineffable Plan.”

“We did stop the Great Plan of the Bible.”

“Mmm, yes. And also, Crowley.”

At this point, they are close enough that Crowley can feel Aziraphale’s plump belly against his own flat abs. Can see the unneeded breathes the angel is taking.

“God doesn’t tell me what to do. She guided me, once upon a time. Maybe She will again. But I have free will. I can do what I want. And what I want is this.”

Aziraphale goes up on his toes and kisses Crowley, gently, on the mouth. 

It’s a nothing sense. Brief, light, there and gone in a millisecond. Yet, Crowley knows – impossible, it’s impossible – exactly what it means.

_I care for you. I love you._

It feels real. It feels very, very real.

“Oh, love,” Aziraphale says, reaching up to take off Crowley’s sunglasses.

The tears that had gathered in them fall and Aziraphale shakes out a handkerchief to wipe at Crowley’s still crying eyes. “Love, love, love. It’s okay.”

God, a being known for Her unconditional love - who forgives the human liars and cheaters and murderers if they ask – had taken love away. _No one_ should love him. _No one._

“You’re lying,” Crowley croaks. He has to force the words out of a throat that wants to both beg for another kiss and to ask Aziraphale _why why why._

“I’m an angel. We don’t lie.”

Crowley thinks that’s a lie, but he doesn’t say so. Instead, he falls forward, letting his head rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder, and feels his heart swell.

_Love love love._

He’s not sure this is real. Or if it is, one day God will take it away. He’s Fallen. He’s a demon. He’s not allowed nice things. Right now though? He’ll cling with everything he has, like the selfish bastard he is. He buries his nose into Aziraphale’s neck, pulls him close, and says, “Take me home.”

He doesn’t care where, his flat or Aziraphale’s place above the shop. Just somewhere where they can be together, where they can hold each other and not let go. Where, maybe, even for just a day, Crowley can feel at peace. Where he’s not a demon. Or an ex-angel. Where he’s just a man in love and loved in return, however temporary.

“Okay,” Aziraphale whispers.

* * *

A hundred years out of 6000 is nothing, a seasonal fab, but Aziraphale is known for holding on to things for a long time. And he wants to hold onto Crowley forever.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he whispers when he sees Crowley stirring. They haven’t slept long, just a few hours at night in a human fashion. They are celestial beings but they’ve been cut off from their respective sides and Aziraphale wonders if one day they might just be humans with wings.

Crowley scowls, like he always does, at the nickname. “I’m not beautiful.”

“You are,” Aziraphale insists, leaning in to kiss Crowley’s cheek. Sometimes, the angel hates God. For a supreme being whose current teachings are peace and love, She had been a bitch before Jesus was born. The scars of those actions went deep.

Every day, Aziraphale tries to heal them. Maybe Crowley is no longer worthy of God’s love, but he is worthy of love. Of Aziraphale’s. Had been from the very, very beginning.

Being a demon didn’t have to mean anything more than an angel with black wings, just as being an angel didn’t have to mean anything but being a demon with white. The hard lines Michael and Beelzebub had drawn between the sides, loveable and unlovable, kind and cruel, pure and sinful, weren’t as defined as Aziraphale once believed.

God might have hurt Crowley, but it had been Lucifer’s doctrine and Beelzebub’s leadership that had shaped Crowley into someone so insistent on being hated. They’d pay, one day.

Today, and tomorrow, and the day after that had different tasks.

Aziraphale brings Crowley’s hand up to his mouth and kisses the back of it. Crowley watches the action.

“I love you,” Aziraphale says and Crowley closes his eyes at the words. Adding them to the collection of the phrase piling in his chest.

Crowley doesn’t always believe him, doesn’t believe it possible. On days where Crowley does, Aziraphale can tell the demon thinks their situation is temporary. That one day Aziraphale will change his mind, remember demons aren’t supposed to be loved or that Crowley doesn’t deserve the soft kisses and affirmations. 

“I…love you too,” Crowley says at last.

Aziraphale beams at him before wiggling in for a kiss.

One day, Crowley will look at him without a single bit of doubt in his eyes. Will hear Aziraphale say “I love you” and know it to be true until the end of the world.

“I love you,” Aziraphale whispers into Crowley’s ear. Crowley pulls him into a desperate hug. “I’ll love you forever.”

Aziraphale will keep saying it over and over until Crowley believes.

**Author's Note:**

> Will I write another GO fic? _Who knows?_  
>  Will I finish my other fics? _Who knows?_
> 
> Do I share samples of my projects on Tumblr? Why yes, yes I do. [Uniaus's Tumblr](uniasus.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, is there a proper name for this ship?


End file.
